"Adam Thorpe is still not as well known as many lesser writers of his generation, partly because of his refusal to produce the same novel twice," said Henry Power in the Times Literary Supplement, reviewing Hodd. "It is his rare gift for ventriloquism that has resulted in such a diverse output; Adam Thorpe has never written as Adam Thorpe. In Hodd he is even less himself than in previous novels (despite his brief cameo at the start), channelling his narrative through two distinct subjectivities. The result is a fascinating and complex novel." "The cod-manuscript device, with the usual tiresome literary tricks - erratic spellings, lacunae, scholarly marginalia - renders the whole idea stillborn," objected David Robson in the Sunday Telegraph. "Thorpe has produced some truly marvellous work in recent years, including Nineteen Twenty-One and The Rules of Perspective, two of the finest English novels of the new millennium, by trusting in his skills as a storyteller. It would be tragic if he got sidetracked into the kind of literary game-playing beloved of lesser talents."

"Often novelist heroes grate, but The Angel's Game makes the most of the choice, playfully invoking a range of authorial gripes [and] taking a gleeful dig at the capriciousness of critics," said Lionel Shriver in the Daily Telegraph, reviewing the new novel from Carlos Ruiz Zafón. However, she observed that in "wrapping up a host of absurd sub-plots, somewhere in there the writer loses his sense of humour. When the book ceases to be self-conscious about its own manipulations, it stops being fun." "The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a wonderful creation, and there are many thrilling set pieces (usually involving horrid deaths), but the novel fails to cohere into a satisfying whole," wrote Mark Sanderson in the Sunday Telegraph, "and the endless literary references become irritating. It's as if Zafón is trying to be Dan Brown for those who have read something other than tabloids. The disappointing result is just a bloated beach-read about hassles in Spain."

"Sarah Hall's text nurtures an underlying sadness that there is in humankind a void, an emptiness which is briefly masked by mental images before being extinguished by biological decay," said Tom Bailey in the Times Literary Supplement, reviewing How to Paint a Dead Man. "Yet the novel's central idea - that in nature morte ... we can begin to comprehend the nature of the living - glazes the writing with an affirmative strength." "Hall's writing manages to combine acute sensitivity and daring," wrote Natalie Sandison in the Times. "Her writing is visceral and engaging, and the emotional lives of her characters are skilfully realised in this bright weave of disparate voices - for whom art is at once a way of seeing and a way of life." "Sarah Hall writes a fine, vivid prose of exceptional poetic intensity, and there are passages in this novel, in particular the sections in Annette's voice, of luminous beauty," said Jane Shilling in the Daily Telegraph. "These chapters have a strange originality that is not so marked elsewhere. There is the faint sense that the author cherishes her other characters just a fraction more than is good for them - the substance of their thoughts on art and life lag slightly behind the ravishing prose in which they are expressed. And although Hall writes admirably about nature, someone must tell her that hares don't live in burrows."